Our society is changing much faster than it used to. Middle-aged and older adults can’t just reference their own youth and move things up a notch and suppose that they will understand what youth and young adults face. “Amid our huge, unplanned experiment with social media, new research suggests that many American adolescents are becoming more anxious, depressed and solitary,” declared an Aug. 15 article in the Wall Street Journal (“The Lonely Burden of Teenage Girls”).

According to a George Barna survey of 25 countries, youth today care strongly about world events (77%) and feel connected with people around the world (57%), yet they don’t feel deeply cared about by those around them (67%) and don’t feel that anyone believes in them (68%). They have a strong global connection but weak personal connections.

This is mirrored in the church, which is hemorraghing its younger generations. The youth who are attending church regularly seek to know and worship God and to grow in the faith, and these motives are encouraging. When asked what they are missing, they would like to see their family and friends attend; to spend time with other members during the week, whether for church events, life skills help, or social life; and they would like to have a mentor. Inside the church as well as outside, young adults are facing a lack of close, vital relationships.

Those who are still attending church are in the minority. Only 10% of those who once attended church are what we might call strong, well-equipped believers. A Barna survey (barna.com) calls them resilient disciples, since they attend church regularly, trust the authority of Scripture, are personally committed to Jesus and believe orthodox doctrines about God the Son, and seek to apply their faith in the world.

Another 38% of young adults go regularly to church but are missing some of the characteristics listed above. A further 30% call themselves Christians but don’t attend church regularly. And the other 22% of those who attended church when young no longer attend and don’t call themselves Christians.

This lack of scriptural grounding on the one hand and close relationships on the other has resulted in huge problems. For example, “The new seular morality teaches [that people’s] morality is not gauged by their private conduct but on their commitment to political causes and collective action that addresses social problems,” said Attorney General William Barr in a speech at Notre Dame’s school of ethics.

RP author Rut Etheridge, who for many years was a college chaplain, reaches out to these younger generations in his book, God Breathed (see p. 8), to engage them with the truth. Another RP author, Rosaria Butterfield, has for several years called us to sacrifice our private time and space to reach the lost and lonely with raw hospitality, a simple sharing of our daily lives. The surveys now confirm the tragic costs when young people don’t have these things in their lives.